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Review of Crazy Love

Publication Date: October 11, 2016

Lulubelle Swan lost her high school sweetheart, Joe, the boy she’d known since 3rd grade, three years ago when he died in Afghanistan. She’d never thought about loving anyone else and she can’t move on. She sees a picture of Joe’s sergeant, he’s smiling and seems to be having a normal life, and decides to track him down to see how he’s been able to move on.

Tynan Cates hires Lu Swan for his construction crew despite the fact that it’s obvious that she doesn’t know the slightest thing about construction. He presumes she’s running away from something or someone and as has been his trademark lately, he can’t say “no” to someone who needs help so he hires her.

I really, really, really enjoyed this book. I loved the main characters, Lu, who is quirky, and Tynan, who is probably as yummy as the chocolate cake described in the novel. I enjoyed the banter. Several scenes had me laughing-out-loud. While I was supposed to fall in love with the town of Coldwater Cove in the last book that I reviewed and didn’t because the town and characters were sugar-coated, I did fall in love with Climax, North Carolina. These characters in Crazy Love felt more like real people. And the Cates brothers! Whoa!

Besides the parallel of both novels occurring in small towns, both novels included vets as the heroes. Although I liked the character of Jake, I loved Tynan. Lee Kilraine didn’t play the sympathy card on him. She made him sound real. The third parallel involved homeless pets and, again, it just seemed that Kilraine got this right too. Houdini, Tynan’s three-legged dog, is a character onto himself, especially when he adopts his own cat that rides on his back.

I realize that Lu could have just initiated a conversation with Tynan instead of pretending to be a construction worker, but it felt like Lu wasn’t capable of dealing with the topic of Joe point-blank. My opinion could be wrong. But certainly there would have been far fewer laughs if Lu hadn’t taken up a nail gun and 2 x 4s.

There was one thing that I’m glad didn’t happen. So often I’ve read novels in which the love of the heroine’s life has died. For some reason, the author finds it necessary to show the dead love as having clay feet or the heroine finds out that he was fooling around or whatever, I guess so that the hero looks better in comparison. Kilraine didn’t do that with Joe in this book. Lu’s memory of Joe was never tarnished. Yay for Kilraine!

Besides some hilarious scenes, there were some that brought tears to my eyes. The climax was eventful and well done. Except for a glitch at the beginning, which hopefully was corrected in editing, the writing was very good.

If you are in need of a romance with laughs, a combustible couple, and a well-done story, I highly recommend Crazy Love. It goes on sale on October 11, 2016.

This is the third novel in the Cates Brothers series. I’m off to find the other two.